Blue, Green, Red and Purple: Video Clip...Old Ladies In The Swimming Pool
…Gravity suspended turns keys in locks, turns back the clock
and they laugh joyously, witlessly, for the very absurdity of it…
In Betty Collins's colourful poem the ladies in the Senior Aquarobics Class manage to turn back time…until they get out of the pool.
I bring you a gift for your inner eye, a gift of blue:
blue smudges and blobs and sweeps of blue:
blue gums; blue clouds, blue sky, and agapanthus blue;
blue shiny tiles of the pool and chlorinated water blue;
benches and shadecloth and eskis,
petunias and patches of lavender bushes
and even the colourbond fence -
all blue:
Now,
dancing and skipping on the coruscating aqua pool,
like animated doughnuts, a dozen brilliant bobbing hats:
red and yellow and pink, cerise and terracotta and green -
tangerine, purple, veridian, scarlet, and even ultra marine -
joyfully pirouetting, petals in the wind, confetti in the springtime –
the hats on the heads of the ladies in the Senior’s Aquarobics Class.
.
Gravity suspended turns keys in locks, turns back the clock
and they laugh joyously, witlessly, for the very absurdity of it:
slipping through the water like elemental sprites,
like elfin creatures almost, like youth itself on holiday.
But now, alas, it’s words alone can tell the rest:
for, as they climb the ladder and remove the glowing hats,
gravity is waiting:
Old bodies resume their usual drag
and all the years that have gone
come back.
